Student & ECR Spotlight – Teferi Mekonnen is a PhD student exploring the longitudinal development of social inequalities in body weight between birth and 14 years of age and identifying important mediators of these inequalities

Please tell us about your career pathway to date (positions and institutes).

I completed a BSc degree in comprehensive Nursing from Mekele University, Ethiopia. I then completed my master’s degree in Public Health Nutrition from the University of Gondar, Ethiopia. I worked for Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia as a graduate assistant (October 2012-June 2016) and Lecturer of Public Health Nutrition (2016-2018). I am currently a Ph.D. student at the Public Health Nutrition research group, department of Nutrition, the University of Oslo.

How would you briefly describe your current research/job to someone who is not familiar with your field of study/work? What is your main research interest?

I am a Ph.D. student at the Tackle project. I am working on a secondary analysis of data from the Norwegian Mother and child cohort study (MoBa) aimed to explore how socioeconomic differences in weight development evolve between birth and adolescence and identifying the mediators explaining socioeconomic differences in weight development at each age and across each age. My research interests are social inequalities in non-communicable diseases and risk factors.

What could help you as a student/ECR to further develop/ grow in your current position? 

Being part of a research group having PhD students, postdocs, researchers and professors in the field in general and involved in a project having collaborations with a research institute and universities in Norway and abroad is a good opportunity for me to develop my skills and share experiences.

What do you think will be the next most important development in the nutrition and/or physical activity field? 

I think the next most important development in the nutrition and /or physical activity field will be focusing on tackling social inequalities in diet, physical activities and different forms of malnutrition.

 

You can get in touch with Teferi via email [email protected] or follow him on twitter @m_yitayew